Lord of Verminion - An Awful Frustrating Experience

[Myon88]

Shrug, it's as good a balance as you can reasonably expect, especially when compared to the rest of the game. An entire role (melee dps) is deadweight in frontlines and rival wings, skillspeed's still a garbage stat for most jobs, and not to mention the endless whining over optimal raid compositions and double ranged physical dominance. There will always be an optimal solution and a metagame, you'd know as much since you've played League. And just as you can pick something off-meta and outplay someone there with superior mechanical skill, so can you do the same here - there's nothing more meritocratic than that.

Even if you could raise the number of metagame relevant minions from 20 to 60, someone else would come along and complain that number isn't 120 or 200. Development budgets are not infinite, at some point you have to decide that something is good enough and put it aside for the moment while you work on something else.

I'd be very careful about drawing relationships between statistics too. Savage raids only see about 1% participation as well, so perhaps they're 'broken' too? What about ultimate? It's a fraction of a fraction of that 1%, I think less than 100 people in the world have cleared it at this point. It's ok for some things to be difficult and niche. PvP is especially intimidating to people because of its zero sum nature - someone is walking away the loser no matter what. It takes a lot of humility and self-reflection to look at it objectively and not get frustrated when that happens.

[Ayirez]

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So your argument as to why a broken game shouldn't be fixed is because it's okay for it to be hardly played and broken? Development budgets aren't infinite, you're right, but with all the Mog Station crap they have now (Which I know many people who buy fantasias on the regular), as well as our monthly subs, as well as their new plan to cut a dungeon out of every other patch to focus on things EXACTLY LIKE THIS, do you really believe they don't have the resources to go in and fix an already developed system? Hell, as far as programming goes even I could change every minion's speed to four stars in a matter of minutes, assuming they didn't program it like idiots. Now, changing the UI to display as much could take a bit longer sure, but I'd say no more than a couple hours for a single programmer.

As for people whining and losing their composure, hell yeah they will! They have every right to when the balance of the game is broken and the devs aren't doing a damn thing about it! At least Riot continually tries over every single patch to balance their champions (the ones they can balance, some are just broken by design like Yasuo and if you give them a few kills they'll snowball to high heaven and back). When was the last time SE looked at balancing LoV? Because as far as I know they never have. I could be wrong, but as far as I know the only thing they've done is buffed MGP rewards and got rid of the entry fee which needless to say isn't balancing, it's damage control at best. In other words, losing a broken game continually because you A) Don't have the bloody minions in meta and can't get them unless you do a crap ton of other things first, and B) Because you're new to the game but are being stomped by players who have no business going against you, but as the game lacks a community due to it sucking so bad everyone has quit trying to play, then yes, people that lose are going to whine and it will be justified for them to do so.

Savage Raids may have only seen 1% participation in the past but in recent times do you think that still is the case? Because I know a crap ton of casual friends who have just started to party finder O1S, O2S, and if they have the patience O3S. With how party finder (ie cross data center) and savage content (not having to meet up in the same zone) are now it's more accessible than it's ever been before, and due to that a lot more players are starting to do it. LoV on the other hand has never had accessibility issues, anyone over level 15 can get to and play it. Lastly, Ultimate was created to be the hardest most punishing thing in the game, that only a handful of players have cleared it is hardly surprising. It isn't broken because the INTENT of the content is to make it so that only the best of the best can clear it. Are you saying that LoV was made for the elite of elites? Because unless you are then what you've said doesn't explain why no one plays it.

What they need to do to fix LoV is as simple as making the game simplified, removing niche abilities that are too situational to ever be of use, leveling out speed across all minions, and figuring it out from there. It isn't my job to balance their game, it's my job to point out to them that it's broken and not fun. I am looking at things as objectively as I would at my own games, despite my anger and frustration, but are you sure you are too? If you've invested time and effort into becoming a master at the broken game, do you think yourself unbiased? If anyone has something to defend about the game it'd be the ones at the top who have embraced it despite its flaws. No, the game will never be perfect, nothing ever can in this world and reality we belong to, but we can still bloody try to get close to it, and if you think that throwing something out and abandoning its development is in any way an optimal way of doing things then I've no idea what to tell you.

Yes, they're mostly focused on new content, and yes, I enjoy the main game a hell of a lot more than any of the mini-games they've mashed into it, but they have the power to address and fix these things if they take the time to do it.

BUT, if they want to sweep it under the rug and abandon it I would tell them to go for it, I couldn't care less. The reason I'm frustrated, angry, and on this forum at all is because they've locked something I want behind winning 10 matches between four separate weeks within a community that is dead and will either smash my face in or force me to do the same to others. I DON'T LIKE THAT. If they introduced the ability to fight npc's and have it count as tournament battles, or lowered the match win requirement to just 1 or 2 four different times, I wouldn't be here, but they designed it the way they did and thus I'm here to tell them that the whole thing is awful as a game design and that they can and should do better. That is all. I have no desire to continue a cyclical conversation, so this will be my last response, but ultimately I just want to have fun in a game I've paid for and pay for every month, and for others to have fun as well, but I am not, and others I have faced were not either.

[Myon88]

Yes, I'm pretty unbiased, if only because the outcome wouldn't change from my point of view, so I don't really have any investment in the current state of the game's design. You can make the game as simple as you want but the more highly skilled player is still going to win, I'm pretty confident of that. As I've said, the RTS genre is as fair as it gets, you can carry yourself to victory on raw APM in a way no other activity will. As a League player, I'm surprised you don't see the allure of an activity that stresses pure APM and multitasking ability - mobas might be casualized RTS games, but they still share the same skillset.

And I don't really follow your argument about new players lacking certain 'meta' minions either. Do you not see the logical fallacy here? If the only minions that were strong were easily acquired by new players, then you'd be complaining that the other 400 in the game aren't relevant. You can't have it both ways, and it's your responsibility to collect the ones you deem worthy just as you would chase after certain powerful triple triad cards. Incidentally, the two minions you've been pointing out - coeurl kittens and wolf pups - are some of the most common in the game, I hope that fact hasn't escaped you. If that wolf pup spam strategy is that good in your eyes, there's nothing stopping you from doing the exact same thing and winning on pure skill because you control them better. Again, the genre is fair and symmetrical like that. Don't like something? Try it and see for yourself.

I think the trap you're falling into is thinking that if the game was 'fairer' somehow then you would win more, or everyone would have a 50% winrate against everyone else. PvP is not for everyone, and if you lack a competitive mindset then frustration is inevitable. It's a self-made problem. The way to winning more is to get better yourself, and all your problems will melt away.

[PotatoTree]

As someone who comes from a Starcraft background I find the balance actually pretty good. A game should never be balanced around beginner level play, all balancing should be done at a higher skill level. Note that the game is already a highly simplified RTS, if you simplify it even more you're just going to end up with something like Triple Triad where a large portion of it is up to a coin toss than skill. So in the end, you'll still have barely anyone playing LoV but you'll lose the few fans that it does have who do appreciate skilled gameplay.


And you're wrong about them not balancing LoV, they have in the past balanced the Snowman strat.

I doubt that everyone likes everything in the game. Some don't like PvP, some don't like GS stuff, some don't like high end raids. Just because you don't like LoV doesn't mean that it needs serious balancing changes.

From a Starcraft RTS perspective, you're basically losing to 6 pool or 7 rax marine spam. Sure in the very low levels of play these are extremely strong strategies, but that doesn't mean the zerglins or marines should be nerfed.

Plus you don't need all minions with niche abilities to be "useful". You only have spots for 24 minions, if the game has just 40 useful minions that's already way more than enough. However, I'm not opposed to them making some niche minions more interesting, to expand the set of good strats. Unfortunately for you this would have the opposite affect of the flattening of gameplay that you're looking for, since as strats expand the skill ceiling to effectively use the strats also expand.

And finally, what you said here is what I'm concerned about: "The reason I'm frustrated, angry, and on this forum at all is because they've locked something I want behind winning 10 matches...". I hope I'm not coming off too harsh, but I'd rather SE just straight up give you the minion so you can do other stuff and not mess with LoV itself. When I face a game where I can't win, but other people are winning with good win ratios, I know that's not the time to hate the game, but that something in my gameplay is wrong and can be improved upon. When I play a game (without matchmaking) where people win 50% of the time because it's "balanced" that's when I know the game is just a coin toss and not worth my time. Also, when you said "It really is a huge waste of time, which to be fair is what games are in the first place, but that I'm having zero fun, and in fact am having the opposite and getting stressed out to all hell, makes me believe without a doubt that this mini-game is completely trash", I really think this 1v1 type of pvp game mode is not for you. I'm not trying to insult or make offence, but your attitude is not conductive for 1v1 type of gameplay. It might be more suitable for team based gameplay, where the win ratios could be closer to 50:50 because you'll either get a good team or bad team. In 1v1 game modes on the other hand, you only have your skill to see you through to a win. I guess what I'm trying to say is that this game mode was not designed for you, and not designed for everyone, but that doesn't make it a bad game.

I play to have the stressful situations. The games where my fingers hurt from hitting keys and I'm sweating and shaking from the adrenaline of a close match are the ones I love.

The one point I do agree on is that minions like Robonyan or Rikku should be available to everyone. Winning because one side has rarer minions shouldn't really be a thing for a skill based game.